The
student is always learning, and maybe aping writing styles –
sometimes subconsciously - for she has not yet found her own, though
that I think is a compliment to those writers that are well-known –
the highest form of flattery that can be paid. And I may not find a
style or one style or my style, since my mind is too easily
influenced by whatever I'm reading, and somehow this always intrudes
into what I'm writing. I could never write a novel and be satisfied
with it. The style, too, sometimes changes in the midst of these
articles because I've picked up another book which has flooded my
brain with new thoughts and ideas. I have to, therefore, work fast.
Get it down; locked down, no more changes, or I'll tinker forever
until it's unrecognisable and far removed from my original notion.
Happy?
Sort of. Not quite.
Happy?
Yes, fairly. Though the closing paragraph doesn't have quite the
right note...
Happy?
No, not with the title...
Happy?
Yes! That's it! Done.
Only
to revisit, say, a year later, before publishing, to experience the
following: a piece I thought was great will seem just okay, or it
will impress again, in a different way; or a piece I thought was just
okay will surprise, even bewilder. I, the author, have flummoxed the
brain reviewing my own work. I may not be able to relate to the piece
at all as I'm now in a different head space, or I may not be able to
recall the effect the novel mentioned in the article had on me. The
eye reviewing is therefore not just a teacher's eye, it's an
objective eye, viewing a work from a distance of time, written by a
different self: a maturing writer, an experimenter.
Still,
I leave the article alone, even if I can't make head or tail of it. I
will not revise it. It meant something, it made sense, in that moment
of composition. I have moved on, that's all. My perspective has
shifted. The opinions I hold now are similar but not an exact match,
and even if they were the wording in which I explained them would be
altered.
With
a pen and a pencil and the tapping of keys, I brought these ideas,
thoughts and themes to life. To revisit and be too critical would
mean an overhaul.
So,
I stand by my words. And the time (and the mood) in which they were
said.
That,
however, doesn't mean I always like the finished then published
pieces. It doesn't mean I don't either – sometimes the ego is
stoked into a small flame of pride. But often I can't make the
connection between me and them. I have detached myself from them. I
view them through a very long lens.
The
teacher's eye thinks: very good; waffle; what?! There's a word
missing there... could there do with a comma...? Should that be a
capital letter?...why has that been put in italics?
The
teacher's eye scans once more, but is no position to judge the place
the article came from. It can only mark the obvious: the grammar, the
punctuation, the structure, the impressions expressly given or
implied; it cannot turn back time and see the world as it was seen
then, it can only visit; a tourist. The article is always passed.
Successful
authors, so I hear, so I've read, also have mixed feelings, changed
feelings towards their own work. Sometimes if they write the
introduction to a reprint they often assert they were young, or it
was an early work, that they should have done this and not that, that
it was overlong or their conception was flawed; that they weren't
keen on its working or known title, or that they'd made it clear the
punctuation shouldn't be amended.
Writers
are happier writing than doing any other line of work, but generally
they're not a self-satisfied breed. They don't recognise, nor
appreciate, their own talents. Others – writers and readers –
have to do that for them.
Picture credit: The Song of the Lark, 1884, Jules Breton (source: WikiArt).
This post was written in 2019.
